The Dragon Hide

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Lyra, holding back a swathe of brambles for her customer to squeeze by, hoped that today she would be lucky and there would be lots. She needed the money. And she’d already seen Jonquil heading up the steep ravine a way ahead of her with two or three followers of his own, making decent progress.

She’d had to insist that her client change into more appropriate footwear for the long, hot climb, but he hadn’t objected. Now that the sun gleamed golden overhead the ever-present river sparkled in its light, a tempting vein of cool blue far below them, pouring its way down through the greens and browns of the valley. At this time of year there were splashes of wild colour along the banks: bright yellow marsh marigolds, pink and white mallows, sky blue forget-me-nots and, just beginning to shoot up, the tall purple-clad stems of rosebay willowherb. Here though, up on the edge of the ravine, the grass was already beginning to dry out and the wiry heather was not yet in bloom. Only occasional blazes of gorse shone yellow from the hillside, its painful dark green spines warning you away as quickly as the sweet, nutty scent drew you in.

The man trod behind Lyra in silence, watching her own feet in order to find the best footholds, as she had suggested. She already liked him much more than the previous week’s customer, for he walked quickly and heeded her warning not to talk once they were underway. Lyra would keep her deposit either way of course, but the money wasn’t the only reason she did this job. She had ulterior motives that her aunt knew nothing about.

Lyra turned to face the rearing granite rock face. This was the hardest part of the climb. They had to cross a section of almost vertical cliff, smooth with age and wear, on a tiny narrow ledge, before they came to a dirt path that would lead them through the boulders and up to the vantage point. She grabbed the hand rope, which she, Jonquil and some of the others had clubbed together to install, and made sure her customer had seen her grab it before climbing across, stretching her feet from one safe spot to another. He reeled a little and for a horrified moment she thought he would slip and fall, but she reached out a hand and pulled him across safely.

The gentleman’s feet scuffed on the path and he knocked loose a small stone just as they came up to the dragon hide. Lyra held up a hand to make him wait and, to her gratification, he froze immediately. His name was Rushworth and he stayed still, only swaying a little, and moving his head around as if he expected to see a dragon flying overhead that very moment. She made him wait until she was certain all was peaceful before silently opening the wooden door and beckoning him into the dark, cool space hidden away under the rocks. Jonquil of course gave her a dirty look as she came in, successfully hiding it from the customers. He could hardly complain that she’d brought Mr Rushworth up here, since the idea of the dragon hide had been Lyra’s own and she had been the one to design it. Indeed the only reason that Jonquil and the other guideboys were welcome here at all was that she had needed help, physical and financial, to actually construct the shelter and several of them had gone in together and worked hard over the autumn and winter to get it completed.

Today only Jonquil had come. He sat with two gentlemen and a young lady — just young enough, apparently, to class as a child and therefore to be permitted the freedom of attending an expedition such as this one. She sat, still and silent, on the stone bench, excitement oozing from her unguarded expression as she scanned the skies through the viewing slots for signs of draconic activity. Lyra, understanding the excitement, caught the young lady’s eye and grinned, and was about to wink at her too when she remembered she was dressed as a lad and would get into trouble. Jonquil saw, and smirked; Lyra blushed, then blushed even hotter as Mr Rushworth gave her a knowing smile and tapped the side of his nose. There would have been no possibility of even beginning to explain how wrong he was, even if speech had been permitted inside the hide, which it was not. Instead Lyra quickly looked back to the sky before either of the young lady’s companions could get involved. Rushworth sat beside her on the bench in a familiar way, quietly making himself comfortable with one of his legs draped over the other. It was not a formal way to sit but he looked very comfortable. Lyra had explained in advance, of course, that there might be a very long wait. Rushworth seemed to find this a reasonable expectation, and now he was settling in. Lyra did the same.

And now waiting was what they did. Nobody spoke, except once, when the young lady stifled a sneeze and one of the accompanying gentlemen offered her a handkerchief. Everyone else glared at him until he was quiet and the young lady, blushing, managed to use the handkerchief without making the slightest sound, a feat which Lyra silently admired. It was a very interesting thing to sit in a small space with a group of complete strangers and keep silent; in fact it was one of the things Lyra liked about this work. Sometimes — having seen these dragons countless times before — she would watch her companions rather than the skies. Lyra enjoyed getting to know them in her imagination. Mr Rushworth, with his sandy hair flopping into his eyes, she imagined to be a slow but earnest student of natural history at one of the universities. She imagined that he liked his toast with butter and his tea with milk and that he had a secret preference for reading novels. Of course Lyra rarely found out whether any of the things she made up about her companions in these circumstances were true, but that was not the point; knowing would have spoiled the fun of it anyway.

While she mused, Lyra quietly took out her telescope. Today promised to be a good hot day. She predicted that soon, now that the sun had warmed the huge, natural slabs of flattish south-facing sandstone that lay along the top of the valley floor, dragons would come. The hide had been positioned deliberately close to the rocks where the dragons liked to lie and soak up the heat, so the telescope wouldn’t be necessary just to see them. But Lyra was not content merely to see. She wanted to study in detail the intricacies of their huge bodies. How were the scales attached? What happened when they dragged against a rock — was there resistance or did that scale simply fall off? What were their teeth like? How many eyelids were there, and how did they work? Lyra’s questions were endless, but she was finding that repeated observation through the telescope was helping her to discover answers to some of them; even answers that she had not been able to find in books. This was the beginning of her big plan.

Of course, as a guide, Lyra tended to offer her telescope to whoever was employing her that day. They paid well for her services, especially now the hide was built. Most of her customers were students without the funding to mount their own expeditions, perhaps not specialising in dragons but needing at least one observation in the wild for the sake of their studies. This valley, with the excellent conditions that attracted dragons most days, and now with the hide, which certainly increased the confidence and safety of any observers, had become quite popular and during the spring and summer trade was lucrative. Because the hide kept visitors so well hidden it would take some kind of mishap for a dragon to discover their presence at all, as long as everyone was sensible and arrived early enough in the day. Indeed even if they were discovered there was still a fairly high chance of survival since the hide sat so deeply in the surrounding boulders; nothing short of flood or flame was likely to cause harm to the inhabitants.

The sun had been providing its dulcet warmth for a good few hours on the rock slabs in the valley below, warming them up to become perfect dragon beds. The sky remained a clear, bright blue. Buff tailed bumble bees buzzed in the gorse. The signs, in short, remained good for a successful afternoon of dragonwatching. Lyra saw a monarch butterfly and they heard a skylark bubbling its mad joyous song from on high. This in itself was enough to bring a smile to the face of the young lady and Lyra, sharing her joy at one of nature’s most beautiful noises, began to wonder more deeply about this young person. Could it be that she, like Lyra herself, felt disdain for the more typical womanly pursuits? Did she wish to wrest her life from the track it seemed destined to follow: to learn the running of a household; to speak French and German with a pretty accent, but never to use them for anything more than appreciating the opera; to marry (the right sort of person, of course) and bring forth children; to fade gently into obscurity, one’s writing and discoveries appreciated only by close friends and family members, if at all? Meanwhile, these accompanying gentlemen could hope to spend years studying whatever they wished; they could make discoveries, invent new devices, influence national policy; they could share their learning — even their opinions — in academic journals. Lyra knew she was lucky to spend her summers with an aunt whose lenience blended favourably with the permissible eccentricity of the very rich. This aunt believed that Lyra spent her days studying dragons; so much was true, although the aunt thought these studies were conducted from the library and without pecuniary advantage. Aunt Cordelia was happy to indulge a favourite young niece over the summer months — for now. But Lyra knew this bounty would not last for ever, and therefore was saving money for her plan, which she would put into action whenever it became intolerable to her to do as her relatives demanded.

Lyra was becoming so engaged in projecting her woes onto this other nameless young lady that she almost forgot to look for dragons and was grateful when Jonquil caught her eye and tilted his head ever so slightly towards the viewing slots. She smiled. He wasn’t so bad after all.

Then the young woman lurched excitedly to her feet, pointing. She managed to restrain herself from actually calling out. Glancing up, Lyra thought for a second that it was just a buzzard or perhaps an eagle but then the silhouette drew closer, revealing itself far too big to be any bird. Everyone gazed up through the viewing slots which now framed swathes of bright golden scales, the sun gleaming almost painfully from their smooth surfaces as the dragon turned. It overshot the rocks, heading for the stream, and Lyra saw that it was an upland oriole, probably a female, in the full bright glory of her bronze-gold summer skin. The male was not present; he must be tending to the eggs. With a little luck there would be hatchlings to observe in a few weeks. That always made a season more lucrative, for tourists as well as students would eagerly part with cash to be shown the spectacle of gawky, huge-eyed babies wobbling across the rocks, while the naturalists too were keen to observe the behaviour of the young dragons from a position of relative safety.

This beautiful female, having finished drinking, lifted her long golden neck and looked back, up the valley, towards where Lyra waited with the others, scarcely daring to breathe. This was the pivotal moment of the enterprise. If the huge beast decided all was peaceful in the valley and settled herself on one of the rocks to sunbathe, only a seriously unsettling experience would dislodge her before she had soaked up a good few hours of heat. Lyra hoped, as much for the sake of the young lady she imagined to be a kindred spirit as for her own customer, that the dragon would find no fault with the valley this afternoon. Rushworth’s deposit would cover her expenses for the week, but if this upland oriole stayed to be observed he was obliged to pay twice that amount again, and more still if a different species of dragon were to put in an appearance too. Work as a dragon guide was unreliable and decidedly risky, but Lyra loved it. She certainly loved it more than staying at home with her father to learn the principles of running a household. When she had money to spare, which was most weeks since her Aunt Cordelia covered her day to day expenses, Lyra would add it to the small fund she was slowly building up under her bed for the purpose of carrying out her wonderful plan. She wanted to commission her own expedition, travelling all the wild places of Scotland and Wales (and those that remained to England too) in order to write her own field guide to the dragons of Britain. There were chapters of course, in Russeau and Trogdon’s classifications of the dragons of Europe, but there was so much to say about the British varieties — so many questions that as yet had no answer — and Lyra desperately wanted to be the one to say it all. But that was a long term goal. It would take a great deal of research before she could even begin to write all the chapters she needed. Even if she got that far, she could not be certain that she would find a publisher who would take her seriously. She did so want to publish her findings under her own name. That would show her father!

After tasting the air and then listening carefully in every direction the upland oriole began to move, slowly, over land, up the gully towards the rocks. It was such an effort to become airborne that bigger dragons tended to avoid doing so whenever possible. So this glorious being was creeping, shimmering, towards the group of hidden watchers. They gazed at her, entranced. Lyra made good use of her telescope to observe the way the oriole’s limbs moved as it slowly pushed itself to the top of the slope. She carefully noted the position of the wings, too, which were held just slightly open, away from the dragon’s flank. Could that be to improve her balance? Or was the great female still wary of a potential threat (but what could threaten a dragon?) and held her wings thus to enable a quick spring aloft if it became desirable? She looked and looked, for as long as the dragon moved, then, when she finally settled on a slab of sandstone, small particles glittering under her wings, Lyra pulled out her notebook and pencil stumps and began to sketch what she had seen.

The young lady in white knelt on the bench beside Lyra, gazing and gazing out at the dragon. One of her two accompanying gentlemen gazed too, though the other soon became board and began to look about. Even Jonquil stared peacefully through the viewing slots. Only Mr Rushworth seemed ill at ease and began to fidget, fiddling with his bag clasp. This seemed odd, given how much he had paid and how patiently he had waited for just this moment. Quickly but quietly Lyra finished her sketches, scooped up her drawing materials and packed everything away. She decided to offer the restless Mr Rushworth a look through her telescope. Perhaps it would help to focus his mind on why he had come.

But Rushworth irritably waved her away and drew out a long, thin case of his own. That was odd: if he had brought his own glass, why had he not made use of it yet? His behaviour was stranger and stranger. Unable to make anything of this eccentric man, Lyra turned and instead offered the telescope to the young lady, who excitedly accepted and held it up to her eye. Neither of them noticed her older comapion’s frown at this apparently free behaviour on the part of the dragon guide as Lyra pantomimed to show her new friend how to adjust the focus. She glanced up at Lyra for a moment in delighted thanks, then bent again to peer at the dragon.

On Lyra’s other side, Rushworth was now raising his own scope to the nearest viewing slot. But — that was an odd-looking spyglass. Lyra couldn’t stifle her loud gasp as she realised that Rushworth was holding not an optical instrument but a gun, and that he was even now sighting along the barrel to where the gorgeous golden dragon lay, totally unawares, in peaceful rest.

‘You devil!’ cried Lyra, swiping at the gun barrel; but it caught in the viewing slot as Rushworth pulled the trigger and the ammunition was discharged as planned. The dragon, though, had been startled by Lyra’s cry and was already on its feet, crouching to jump. The huge bang of the musket reverberated from the rocks around the valley. Birds flew up all around; the wind caught in the trees and rocked them like the sea. Lyra saw small mammals running. As for the dragon herself, she reared up, bellowing. It was the loudest sound Lyra had ever heard. The oriole opened her wings, trying to get airborne, but she was trailing blood from the wound in her hind leg and could not make the spring. She howled again, clawing at the air, her great long neck swinging wildly around in search of whatever had been the cause of such awful pain. Lyra was in tears.

‘What have you done?’ she kept howling at Rushworth, ‘What do you think you’re trying to do? Don’t you know how precious these creatures are? Why would you try to shoot one?’

The gun was still pointing into the viewing slot. Lyra couldn’t tell whether it could be fired again without being reloaded, but she didn’t want to take any chances. She grabbed Rushworth around the waist and hauled him off the bench, surprised when the young lady, having carefully put down the telescope, came to her aid. The gun clattered to the floor as, between them, they forced Rushworth down. Jonquil was watching with interest, but the lady’s companions took hold of her and pulled her away to restrain her on the other side of the small chamber.

‘How dare you lay your hands on me?’ Rushworth yelled at Lyra in a fury. ‘I paid you good money to help me and now you have ruined my whole day’s work! I'll never win that bet now! Have you any idea how many weeks of research it took—‘ he got shakily to his feet, fuming. As he stood he snatched up the gun, which he now pointed at Lyra herself. ‘You won’t get away with this, you little ratbag!’

Fortunately for Lyra, Jonquil decided at this moment to intervene. He strolled calmly over and interposed his tall, lanky body between Lyra and Rushworth, taking the gun into his own hands. ‘Dragons are protected, you know,’ he said coolly. ‘It’s you who won’t get away with it.’ Rushworth turned pale at this lie; apparently he hadn’t done enough research on the local bylaws to know where he stood. Whatever his reasons, attacking a dragon without warning in such an isolated spot was a truly reckless thing to do.

‘The dragon!’ called one of the gentlemen suddenly, and they all turned to look. The vast beast was becoming desperate and was now attempting to crawl up the cliff beside them, looking for high ground to launch herself into flight. However, she was not putting any weight on her injured leg and, in her desperation, had begun scrabbling with her forelegs at the cliff close to the hide. Stones and debris tumbled down onto her body, infuriating her further. She began to huff out angry gouts of flame.

They were trapped. The hide would protect them from scrabbling or from reaching claws. But as the gorse and dry heather surrounding them began to blaze, Lyra realised that they were in big trouble. The dragon might not be able to pull them out of the hide, but, unless they could put out the flames, the heat would become unbearably intense. Lyra, Jonquil and their customers for the day would be baked as if in an oven.